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Trade Of The Decade: Short 'Trust'
The sad truth is that, based on Gallup survey data, Americans have never trusted other Americans less. Is this the "short" that catalyzed the real trade of the decade - "long gold" - as a hedge for the lies and liars that run the nation...
(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)
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Amazing - the trade for the 'next' decade will also be 'long gold'.
In short, the answer to Tyler's question is a resounding Yes...
Distrust, bitches!
DaddyO
Does trust also imply Faith and Confidence?
Would like to see a chart of foreign trust. Probably resemble a Gold chart after the London PM "fix".
At any rate, the writing is on the wall for the reserve currency.
Divide et impera.
A maxim and stratagem as old as mankind.
But we're so EXCEPTIONAL!
Our distrust has also never been higher in our institutions - educational, health, governmental, religious and charitable. Oh, not to mention our august financial institutions!
So, it is soon time to tear them down and band in trust of something better. But power must be wrest away from the MIC people first. Tricky, but it can be done.
Only thing I trust is my Six-shoot'in Sally, my faithful dog "Corpse Grinder", mi familia, and my stackers... everything else is negotiable...
We're headed for some very, very rough times in the nation.
I can see the unmistakable signs anecdotally & also through a larger lens. The fact that Americans are so divided & suspicious of each other is just yet another precursor of what, unfortunately, lay ahead.
It's every person for themself more than ever before, with cynicism and mistrust in government entities & agencies at a record high (and for good reason).
Generational & class warfare is raging red hot, too.
This is what happens when the pursuit of wealth is undertaken not for rational,
& meaningful ends (such as to better able to obtain nutritious food, mental & physical health, comfortable & safe shelter, fundamentally sound education, etc.) but rather, for irrational, marketing/advertisement driven, status conscience, empty purposes, to the extent that people are willing to morally bankrupt themselves..
...when the pursuit of money to accumulate it in such quantity & for such truly meaningless purposes turns into a de facto religion.
Which one of you bastards stole my Woobie?
RELATED ESSAY BY DYLAN GRICE...
Memo to Central Banks: You’re debasing more than our currency (02/10/2012)
At its most fundamental level, economic activity is no more than an exchange between strangers. It depends, therefore, on a degree of trust between strangers. Since money is the agent of exchange, it is the agent of trust. Debasing money therefore debases trust. History is replete with Great Disorders in which social cohesion has been undermined by currency debasements. The multi-decade credit inflation can now be seen to have had similarly corrosive effects. Yet central banks continue down the same route. The writing is on the wall. Further debasement of money will cause further debasement of society. I fear a Great Disorder.
I am more worried than I have ever been about the clouds gathering today (which may be the most wonderful contrary indicator you could hope for...). I hope they pass without breaking, but I fear the defining feature of coming decades will be a Great Disorder of the sort which has defined past epochs and scarred whole generations‚Next to language, money is the most important medium through which modern societies communicate? writes Bernd Widdig in his masterful analysis of Germany’s inflation crisis ‚Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany.? His may be an abstract observation, but it has the commendable merit of being true ... all economic activity requires the cooperation of strangers and therefore, a degree of trust between cooperating strangers. Since money is the agent of such mutual trust, debasing money implies debasing the trust upon which social cohesion rests.
So I keep wondering to myself, do our money-printing central banks and their cheerleaders understand the full consequences of the monetary debasement they continue to engineer? Inflation of the CPI might be a consequence both seen and measurable. A broad inflation of asset prices might be a consequence seen, though not measurable. But what about the consequences that are unseen but unmeasurable – and are all the more destructive for it? I feel queasy about the enthusiasm with which our wise economists play games with something about which we have such a poor understanding.
If you take a look around you, any artefact you see will only be there thanks to the cooperative behaviour of lots of people you don’t know. You will probably never know them, nor they you. The screen you watch on your terminal, the content you read, the orders which make the prices flicker ... the coffee you drink, the cup you hold, the bin you throw it in afterwards ... all your clothes, all your accessories, all the buildings you’ve been in, all the cars ... you get the idea. Without exception everything you own, everything you want to own, everything you need, and everything you think you need embodies the different skills and talents of a mind- boggling number of complete strangers. In a very real sense we constantly trust in strangers to a degree, as strangers trust us. Such cooperative activity is to everyone’s great benefit and I find it is a marvellous thing to behold.
The value strangers put on each other’s contributions manifests itself in prices, and prices require money. So it is through money that we express the extent of our appreciation for the many different talents embedded in each thing we consume, and through money that our skills are in turn valued by others. Money, in other words, is the agent of this anonymous exchange, and therefore money is also the agent of the hidden trust on which it depends. Thus, as Bernd Widdig reflects in his book (which I urge you all to read), money ...
“... is more than simply a tool for economic exchange; its different qualities shape the way modern people think, how they make sense of their reality, how they communicate, and ultimately how they find their place and identity in a modern environment.”
Debasing money might be expected to have effects beyond the merely financial domain. Of course, there are many ways to debase money. Coin can be clipped, paper money can be printed, credit can be created on the basis of demand deposits which aren’t there ... the effects are ultimately the same though: the implied trust that money communicates through society is eroded.
To see how, consider the example of money printing by authorities. We know that such an exercise raises revenues since the authorities now have a very real increase in purchasing power. But we also know that revenue cannot be raised by one party without another party paying. So who pays?
If the authorities raise taxes explicitly and openly, voters know exactly why they have less spending power. They also know how much less spending power they have. But if the authorities instead raise money by simply printing it, they raise the revenue by stealth. No one knows upon whom the burden falls. People notice only that they can’t afford the things they used to be able to afford, or they can’t afford the things which everyone else can afford. They know that something is wrong, but they just don’t know what, why, or who is to blame. So inevitably they look for someone to blame.
The dynamic is similar to that found in the well-worn plot line in which a group of strangers are initially brought together in happier circumstances, such as a cruise, a long train journey or a weekend away. In the beginning, spirits are high. The strangers exchange jokes and get to know one another as the journey begins. Then some crime is committed. They know it must be one of them, but they don’t know who. A great suspicion ensues. All trust between them is broken down and the infighting begins....
http://www.dailypaul.com/261285/memo-to-central-banks-you-re-debasing-mo...
Something that also ties into the "value quality over quantity" mantra, as it relates to our debased, marketing/advertisement fueled desire to accumulate disposable, empty trash, for the sake of owning (or leasing/renting) & brandishing some faux-douche label of consumer grade, planned obsolescence:
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=224419
(But that was just getting broken in with 2.6 million miles)
(He recently passed 3 million miles):
http://blogs.automotive.com/irv-gordons-volvo-p1800-reaches-3-million-mi...
Buy quality, cry once, and then take good care of it, and ye shall be taken good care of, also. Pass on the disposable faux-doucheNess grade of goods, and quality rules over quantity.
Did someone say "Long Gold"???...perhaps more than you might think!
Gold will rebalance the sum of all Fiat expansion
http://twoshortplanksunplugged.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/gold-will-rebalance-sum-of-all-fiat.html
Great comment. Widowmaker has noted this decline, too. Look no further than travel on roads. The USA is heading towards Moscow where every driver will need a dashcam in order to preserve "order."
Also, the cancer of incorporation is absolutely obliterating the social fabric and justice of the USA. Supported by Fascist-Sam and the Kangaroo Kourt, incorporation is undermining community writ large. Nameless, faceless, lawless and unaccountable, the bastardization of incorporation is accelerating decline in every household/family/group.
Government (HA) is the predator and sponsers and promotes all of the above, added with wealth distribution from producers to the free shit army (the top .01%!!), butchering the rule of law/Constitution and encouraging fraud and theft by perverting the free market. Your logo is corect, END THE FED (it's totally broke anyway). The world blew up and "government" is trying to put together a popped balloon.
What could go wrong!?
The gold trade will be attractive when gold is in the middle 700's, which is still far above the mean.
Otherwise, for anyone under 50 get out of debt. Trade 401k's and IRAs in for mortgage payoff. Work through education if that is your lot. Do not use electronic money or any fraud fiat if one can help it. Barter/trade and see how attractive it can be. Vote to repeal the income tax and short EVERYTHING financial (fraud).
Lack of social trust is a characterisitic of multicultural, racially diverse communities.
Diversity and social trustHarvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study how diversity affects social trust.[88] He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam.[89] In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that
Ethologist Frank Salter writes:
Speaking of trust and fiat currency, it looks like things are about to get real...
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2013/10/01/oath-keepers-is-going-operational-by-forming-special-civilization-preservation-teams/
DaddyO
Must be why Piers Morgan's doing so well.....not
"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves."
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
Also go long pawn shops they are going to be the people's bank when the confetti banks paper finally loses the last vestiges of trust. As of right now pawn shops don't have a shortage of high quality collateral and not that funny paper stuff to issue loans against, liquidity and volume is another issue but the fact of the matter is high quality colaterial backing loans = higher degree of trust involved concerning the lender which is something they will always have going for them in that regard.
Ok, I'll bite. What ticker symbol do you suggest we use to go long pawn shops? Not sure many of these are public companies that trade on the equities markets.
Which explains why retail is still on the sidelines.
Even Rudy does not want to play in a rigged game.
Natural side effect of a pure fiat monetary system.
Have I ever lied to you?
Define "Lied"...
"I never had sex with that woman"...to cite as an example.
DaddyO
Lies abound indeed; truth, a scarcity. Yet, there are examples of untainted veracity in the contemporary era. To wit:
"I want to fundamentally change America."
The check is in the mail.
I am not a crook.
The ACA will save you $$$.
The most transparent administration in history.
I will not cum in your mouth.
Thats what it all boils down to, trust.
I've always found it hard to trust people who constantly lie to me about their real motives. It establishes a track record of lies detailing the real motives of the liars ;-)
Or the underlying character or lack thereof...
Trust in government and its elected leaders is at an all time low for obvious reasons.
Does the drubbing one takes running for office have an affect on the character and quality of the candidates who are willing to subject themselves to said drubbing?
DaddyO
Its a fair point.
I'm not sure the character and quality of the candidates count anymore.
You never see a brilliant midget, of the finest character and qualities win so therefore will not subject themselves to the baseness of the majority they are willing to help.
You & I are not midgets...lol...just making your same point but "society" wants to see a certain type of person outwardly, its distressing.
In point of fact, I was at a ribbon cutting ceremony today (in the course of my biz, not by invitation or design of course, but by complete accident) and I have never seen such a bunch of glad-handing fools in my life. I came away with the notion they are completely dependent on the people "underneath them" to even suck in air and those people are the "next-in-line" and have absolutely no training, education, common sense or any desire to obtain it, as, they are next-in-line!
I can't tell you what I do but...I'm serious...the guy who designed the building, who has aspirations of grandeur to "the next level", had no clue what I was talking about and referred me to the general contractor who only vaguely understood what I was talking about and conveyed he had only done what he was paid to do...which-was-wrong/incomplete...by a fat assed county commisioner who had no idea what he was doing when he got a grant to hire the guy who designed the building in question.
Apparently, its all about the photo-op, with an even dumber press photographer, the stolen money, in front of a non-functonal building...but it will look great in the paper for the masses, I guess...lol.
Never been so bummed in my life...we're so fucked.
I would trust more than have faith in the American people.
Divide and conquer. Oldest and best trick in the book.
Gee. Do you think that has anything to do with massive immigration?
It has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with fear imposed by the state.
I trust Pepe and Jose, the fruit pickers, more than I trust...just about anybody else in a position of power.
I will give you a thumbs up....but ask yourself...where will you go when your country turns its back on you?
No doubt, but immigration is not a problem when there is upward mobility in the system. As it is, immigrants are coming in to compete for low wage jobs and there's nothing else on the horizon for those being displaced. John McCain's meme of "immigrants do jobs that Americans don't want" fell flat because it is no longer true. Was when he was a young Admiral's son, perhaps, but no longer. This is a recipe for disaster, as planned.
"If you pour oil and vinegar into the same vessel, you would call them not friends but opponents." Aeschylus
Salad Dressing?
You have to shake the hell out of them to get any results worth pouring on your salad.
Are we being shaken the hell out of by the powers that be?
DaddyO
:"Trust but verify". It worked to get rid of a lot of nuclear weapons.
I trust that everyone has no trust for their people in power.
And I trust that they will be correct in their mistrust.
Over 1 % per year.
A whole lot of mistrust going around. One might even say statistically significant.
Man do I feel that. I trust no one anymore. Friends and Family that's it. I mostly Trust Zero Hedge but have wondered sometimes if they are CIA counterpsyops trying to fuck me out of my money by going short. That how fucked up suspicious I've become.
Then learn about and buy physical gold. The more you know the better.
Even if you only have one fucking ounce of Gold....after you hold it for awhile...you know that it is real. That is the real allure. Funny, when I see the paper price crumble I just do not care. If anything, I want to buy more.
One day..perhaps...I will look back on my beliefs as an error, but, I will not have regrets.
Diversify! Not everything I own is Gold. However, I own Gold.
I think history is on your side...
I too view price suppression, "Monkey-Hammering" if you will as the ultimate buying opportunity.
I did some fiat conversion a couple of weeks ago, first conversion in quite sometime.
DaddyO
Why the BITE ME on the Arizona colors? Is it a snake thing or a do not fuck with me thing?
Best Harley rides I ever had were in Bizzzbeee.
It's a respect thing for the Govenor who had the balls to stand up to DOJ when everyone else folded up like a cheap suitcase...
Remember, Immigration and Gov Brewer?
DaddyO
OBTW, it's a don't F*ck with me thing...
The multi-thousand year chart establishes it as the "gold standard" of purchasing power preservation, despite Bernanke's 'traditional' MMT bullshit.
Having a gold coin is like holding a totem in the movie Inception... the weight and heft of it are there to remind you of what's real.
If there are 10 billion ounces of gold and 7.115 billion people on the surface of the earth then even wealth distribution would give every individual just over 1.4 ounces.
The UK M3 money supply is £2,418,190,000,000 and the population is 63,700,000 so for a UK citizen to have their even share of the UK money supply they would need ~£37,962. UK mean income 2012-2013 is £29.900. Their share of the worlds gold would cost them about £1200, or about 4% mean income. Whereas cost to own an even share of cash represents 126% of mean income (and rising as wages fall and BoE prints)
Ahh, the question should be "Who do you trust more, the American people or the Government?"
Or a better way to put it, who would you trust more with the life of your 13 year old daughter, a friend/neighbor or Health and Human Services
Can we just get on with the crash already. Enough is enough. Just sayin
I trust All Politicians implicitly.
P.O. Box Psycho Ward
Loony Bin
It is all in the conditioning. This is a condition imposed to create self-destruction.
Two ways to destroy, invade and kill by force, or turn the people on/against themselves.
More mass shootings are on the way as political and economic pressures increase on those least able to cope. This is the new norm, and will intensify until the imbalance of corporate greed is undone.
The Peter Principle, when applied to bankers and countries, results in Central Bankers and Empires.
Learn from Nature: Make sure than even the Biggest & Strongest reach hard limits, and are eventually taken down and recycled in the Great Circle of Life.
I don't trust Israel. Thus I trust no one.
Short: Trust in other Americans, especially those that can't stay out of other people's business.
Long: Looks like a guns and ammo trade to me.
silly
ME
I thought it was Short Gold from 1800
And Short Gold stocks from way up higher
Yes Alex ,Gold for 1000 please.
I am surprised that it is even double digits ... lying is now ok, so who can you trust?
Truth took a bit hit with Bill Clinton ... never recovered
I am sorry America that you have to put up with all this.
www.montrealgazette.com/news/easy+secret+making+people+like+trust+more/8...
The distrust started with the Fed establishing negative interest rates during the Greenspan years and will come to a crescendo with Bernanke printing money ($3T and counting). These policies have purposely debased the currency, and promoted debt over saving. Then the Federal deficits being used to promote (force)"social change".... ahem.
When one thinks about it, it gets really simple.
Is there going to be an Triple Short Trust Politician ETF where I can buy?....Goldman? Goldman?
Scale graph 0 to 100 -- looks different.